Rich and McCafferty are not impressed with our efforts to explain away Reagan’s reappearance with the truth—most of the truth anyhow. McCafferty isn’t buying the old Indian curse. She needs hard evidence with logical explanations behind it, a drifter, your run-of-the-mill psychotic serial killer, a demented grandfather whose legalistic ways ultimately did him in. No, I didn’t give her my father. There was no point. I let Rich discover the body as he circled the premises. My father’s heart stopped at some point in the night. He was found sprawled out, face up to the sky, eyes wide open, mouth agape, arms strung out. My father had hung himself on the cross of his own disabling judgment. His impossible rules had already taken the life of so many, and now they had finally taken his.

After the first twenty-four hours of having Reagan home, the media circus died down, snuffed out like a flame that we never wanted burning in the first place. The public’s opinion of us remains the same, at least for now. Allison and I were money-grubbing schemers who made up a second girl—profited off the false kidnapping of our own daughter. My father’s storage facility was exposed, but the public doesn’t believe for a second that Allison and I didn’t have a hand in it. They say Reagan is too well-adjusted for a child who was left alone in a locker for the better part of two months. But she wasn’t alone. My father visited daily. There was a stash of sedatives found that he used to knock her out when he wasn’t around. It must have been hell. He could have killed her. I’m shocked he didn’t for the sport of it. After all, he had a record to maintain. I’m not sure about Monica’s role. But the rest of the time without my father—it must have been so very hard for Reagan.

Allison, Reagan, and I drive down to the Concordia cemetery, to the inadvertent family plot where my father has a prepaid hole in the ground waiting for him. We’ve gone through the motions of planning a funeral, the wheels of which my father had started turning over thirty years ago. A part of me doesn’t know what to make out of the fact that my dad had paid for and planned his demise for over three decades. My father always was a planner. The only regret here being, he should have gone first.

We pull along the curb in the middle of the cemetery, with all of its winding roads, its birch and aspens already bald as we head into winter. The mound of dirt waiting to cover my father’s casket sits right there next to him in his new two-by-six cell—one he will never escape from. A small crowd has gathered, mostly reporters, old colleagues, talking amongst themselves.

I reach over and give Allison’s hand a squeeze. “You okay?”

“I’m okay if you are.” Her milk white teeth graze over her lips. So beautiful. It’s the only thought I have of my wife lately. So perfectly beautiful and she’s all mine.

“Let’s do this.” We deliberated briefly on how to go about it, but at the end of the day it wasn’t about me or our anger toward that demented fool who brought so much tragedy to so many. It was about Reagan. She loved him. At the moment, she doesn’t know any better. She wants to say one final goodnight to Papa. And I’m sure one day, when we spell out exactly what kind of a monster he really was, she’ll appreciate knowing the location of his grave so she can swing by once in a while and spit on it.

We get out and I take Reagan up in my arms. My daughter. I may not be able to say she is flesh from my flesh, but I feel it even in that way. No one will ever take Reagan away from me again. She is mine, through and through. Allison heads over to say hello to her parents. Her mother, another psychotic in a long line of psychotics fate has surrounded us with—and she accepts her with open arms.

“Auntie Mony!” Reagan’s miniature feet swim near my legs as she points to a familiar brunette.

I glare over at Monica with her thick black coat, matching dark hat with its widow veil, dark sunglasses that eat up half her face. My father mentioned she helped out—at least in the beginning. She’s just as culpable in my eyes.

Reagan bucks as if spurring me in that direction. “Auntie Mony let me stay at her house until Papa took me to our great adventure. She has a puppy. I want a puppy, Daddy.” Her fragile arms wrap tight around my shoulders. “I love you.” Her tiny features morph into a mask of worry. “I don’t want any more big adventures. Next time you and Mommy need to leave—please take me with you.” Her voice breaks with a whimper and I pull her in close, my hot breath in her hair.

“I will never leave you. You will never spend the night alone again.”

“I was never alone, Daddy.” Her frail hand slaps against the side of my face as she grips me. Her eyes sparkle into mine, and I don’t have the heart to delve too deep into the trauma we just pulled her out of, but my blood runs cold at who it could have been. “Auntie Mony taught me to play Old Maid. She said she loved that game when she was a little girl my age. And jacks. We played lots and lots of jacks.”

My rage shifts toward Monica and the dark ludicrous path she followed my father down.

I set Reagan down on the damp grass. “Why don’t you head over to your mom and say hi to your grandparents?” She takes off without any further prompting, but I head over to the merry widow, a grin on those bright red-stained lips of hers. “Don’t bother smiling at me. You will never get one out of me again.”

“That’s harsh.” She shudders as she looks to my father’s baby blue casket. Blue. Of all the colors of the rainbow, my father chose something youthful, far too innocent to encapsulate himself in forever.

“They’re going to be harsher to you where you’re going.” I keep my gaze straight ahead, soaking in the white sky, not a trace of the hue my father has robed himself in.

Monica sucks in an auditory breath. “Look, you can’t prove anything. I didn’t do anything wrong. Your father—he needed me. Your mother shut him out and he needed the feel of a woman in his life.”

I glance over at the thickly embedded worry lines tunneled into her forehead. Monica has aged thirty years in these last few days.

“He loved me.” A silent tear runs down her cheek. “When you abandoned me and the baby, he stepped in. He was doing the right thing by me.”

“You never had my baby, Monica. It wasn’t possible. The math is wrong. And”—I glance to Allison as an icy lone tear makes its way down my own face—“I’m not able to have a baby.” There. It’s as if a boulder has lifted from my shoulders. When Allison and I were trying and it didn’t happen, I wondered if it was her. But before I asked Allison to get herself checked out, I thought I’d take myself off the infertility shelf. Sure enough, my sperm had low motility. It would be a miracle for me to have another baby again. Or at least that’s what I believed when I thought I had already miraculously conceived Reagan. That’s how I was certain that Hailey’s baby wasn’t mine. Rich ran the DNA, and I was right. Faulk Oden’s wife, had yet another man to heat the sheets with. Of course, I still bear the guilt. I’ve turned into another Price monster who takes down families. It’s a painful truth that I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.

“I had your baby.” Monica shakes her head in disbelief. “I had a beautiful baby girl, my Angel—our Angel. She had your eyes, your mouth, that beautiful, beautiful nose.” Her fingers trace over my features. Monica is fraying around the edges, her twisted wires have crossed as her eyes set over me, dazed and catatonic.

“No, Mon.” I gently pull her hand away from me. “You had my father’s child. You had an affair with the corpse in that casket, and then you aided him in kidnapping my daughter. You brought my mother pain, and then you brought my wife and me both irreparable agony. And you can shovel all the crazy you want out in court. Hell, I don’t care. I just need you locked up and far away from my family and me. You had no right.”

Her eyes widen, red pools of blood, of murder, and for the first time in a week, I see my father’s reflection in them, old and haggard, out for revenge. And just like that, I soften.

“Get a good attorney. Plead insanity. I’m sure they’ll go easy on you.”

I head over to where Rich stands with my wife, my daughter, and I take my place among the small circle of family I have left on the planet. But it’s more than enough. It always will be.

---

In the months that follow, life slows to a beautiful crawl. Allison takes it upon herself to track down both of Heather Evan’s daughters, and we register as foster parents so that we can take them in. Allison felt as if they were innocent victims in all of this. She wanted to repay them. She felt as if they deserved better—she was right. And just like that, we become a house full of Allisons. At one point in life that would have been a very dark scenario, but today it’s a blessing. Neither of the girls’ fathers is truly known. They are orphans essentially and have even begun calling Allison—senior—Mom, and I have become Dad. The GoFundMe money was carefully subdivided amongst the Terrific Three as we’ve begun to collectively call the girls. When the time comes for college they will be more than ready. In that respect, Heather performed a miracle.

Allison and I settle the girls in bed, Ally, A, and Reagan. The two sisters down the hall, and Reagan, their sister at heart, in the room closest to ours. We always make sure to tuck Reagan in last, spending just a few extra moments in her bedroom. It’s still surreal to have her back—to have had her gone to begin with. We read a quick bedtime story, turn out the lights, and say a heartfelt prayer before we leave.

Allison and I lean against the door smiling at one another, already drunk off our own affections. We set the sheets on fire on a regular basis now. We are husband and wife in every single way. What those dark forces meant to destroy has fortified us, written our love story over our hearts like fire over stone. We are united. So achingly close, another human being could never come between us again.

“You ready to hit the sack, Mrs. Price?” I wince into my own name, our shared dark moniker.

A mischievous smile curves up the side of her face. “You, Mr. Price, are a very naughty, naughty boy.”

“I can only hope you’ll treat me accordingly.” Somehow, someway we’ve managed to sidestep the pile of shit my father landed us in and we’ve come away clean, unscathed, dare I say, better.

A laugh gets caught in my throat, and I stop cold as the sound of murmuring breaks out from behind Reagan’s door.

Allison brings her finger to her lips as her eyes grow wide. The sound of voices grows louder, the sound of giggling, the rumbled of something far more intense.

I don’t hesitate bursting my way inside to find Reagan tucked in bed, the quilt pulled tight around her sleeping frame, the nightstand light off.

Allison flies to the bed and pulls Reagan onto her lap. “Are you okay? Oh God—were you having a bad dream?” She wipes Reagan’s hair back from her forehead.

Reagan laughs a disconcertingly long chortle and my blood turns to ice. “Ota always comes by to say goodnight to me. She came by every single night during my great adventure. She says I won’t ever really be alone. Isn’t that nice?”

Both Allison and I pant through the silence as Reagan’s words slice through the nexus of our beings.

Reagan’s features darken right along with ours. “You’re still angry with her, aren’t you?” Her voice grows sharp. “She said you would be. She said you were angry with Grandpa too. But you shouldn’t be. Ota says Grandpa saved me. The night he took me away on our great adventure would have been my last.” Her tiny frame curls under the covers. “Ota says they can’t hurt me when I’m in trouble. Why was I in trouble?”

Allison and I look at one another, good and long. My mind tries its best to put the fractured pieces together. Could it be that Ota was going to kill Reagan that night I let them wander out the door—and my father, of all people, inadvertently put a hedge of protection over her with the disaster he brought into our lives? The article Allison and I read together comes to mind. Something about the tribe sealing their honor, each death was to come purely from vengeance—unadulterated by worldly disorder. If my father could do anything right it was bring worldly disorder upon his family.

“Why can’t you love her like I do?” Reagan whines. “She’s my very best friend in the whole wide world.”

Allison shudders.

“She can come over.” I hear myself say in one of those surreal out-of-body moments. “But she’ll have to use the front door like any other friend, and it will have to be after school.”

“Just the way we used to?” Reagan’s little face lights up as if Ota were the equivalent of Santa Claus—an ax-wielding jolly old Saint Fucking Nick.

“Yes.” I force a smile to come and go. “Just the way we used to.”

And I’m going to kill her, over and over, and over again until I get it right.

I have to.

Allison looks to me with those sorrowful sad eyes and gives a slight nod. We are on the same murderous page.

---

In the spring, one sweet honeysuckle-scented day, there’s a light knock on the door, so small, so very fragile that it stops both Allison and me in our dancing in the kitchen, making dinner together tracks.

Allison’s chest palpitates visibly from beneath the flimsy fabric of her sundress, one she hasn’t put on since our move from California. “Who do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.” Those are, in fact, the worst words you can say to your wife. Where is our child? Allison shouted to me so long ago, all night like a chorus, and I had to tell her that very phrase. I don’t know. The very worst words right after our child is missing.

We head over to the door, our steps in tune to one another as if this were a choreographed move, and I swing it open, brave, as if a new frontier awaited us. We are so hopeful. We have waited, planned for this, prayed for it, and sure enough, there stands a pint-sized brunette with her dark soulless eyes laughing at us with the sound of a thousand deceased spirits roaming inside her. It’s about damn time.

Ota looks up at us with that mocking grin, all of her murderous intent. “Can I play with Reagan today?”

Allison and I share a quiet glance. We have done our homework, our due diligence. Originally, we had surmised that the best way to contain the enemy is to keep her within arm’s length, but something far better had come our way and we would not only keep her at an arm’s length, we would have the upper hand.

“Come in, Ota.” I glare at the menace as she strides on by. Yes, my father had it right. The wages of sin is death, but the sinners who killed the Chachnoaw tribe died off long ago. Enough blood has been spilt, enough to cover their ancestors up to their eyeballs. But with fire, a cleansing can happen. Just like Dolla Chetney was full of bullshit, we have discovered through veracious research that the underpinnings of this curse were just the same. It turns out there is very much an off button, a fiery, flame-filled goodbye to this hell forever.

Only fire could one day save Reagan from the menace amongst us, the seemingly innocent being hell-bent on taking her life. Once set to flames, the spirits cannot escape.

“Where is Reagan?” Her tiny nose lifts to the air.

“Out back, honey.” Allison manufactures a smile as we play along with this very dangerous game.

Ota skips off, her ponytail whips back and forth, so free, such a mockery of innocence. But the kindling is ready. Allison and I had purchased an enormous outdoor fireplace and had it installed out back. The salesman said you could roast a deer in it. Ota is a bit smaller than your average deer. I’ve rigged it with iron bars, ten different pad locks ready to go. All hell is about to break loose, and I’m glad the girls aren’t home to see it. Ally—our oldest, is supervising the girls while they’re at gymnastics. Allison and I won’t need to be there until six to pick them up. I think once the fire is stoked there might be time for a glass of wine. Allison and I have rehearsed every move, trained for this as if it were the Super Bowl.

Ota reaches the kitchen door and takes a wary look out the window while I snatch the rope off the counter. She turns to look at us with those black soulless pools she sees the world through.

Allison sheds a satisfied smile. “Now.”